


the moon shines in your half-closed eyes

by bazooka



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alcohol, Depression, Fluff and Angst, Internalized Homophobia, Love Confessions, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-24
Updated: 2016-07-24
Packaged: 2018-07-26 11:56:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7573168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bazooka/pseuds/bazooka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The official consensus was that it was Kyungsoo. It was Kyungsoo, it was Friday, he’d walked into the bar five minutes late looking like he’d eaten sixteen lemons and had his soul shat on by an entire flock of birds, and this was just something that happened sometimes. Not a lot, but y’know. Every couple months. You couldn’t talk to him or comfort him, you could just keep buying him drinks until he passed out cold, facedown on the table.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the moon shines in your half-closed eyes

**Author's Note:**

> this is my first time posting an EXO fic so hopefully it's all right ^^

The official consensus was that it was Kyungsoo. It was Kyungsoo, it was Friday, he’d walked into the bar five minutes late looking like he’d eaten sixteen lemons and had his soul shat on by an entire flock of birds, and this was just something that happened sometimes. Not a lot, but y’know. Every couple months. You couldn’t talk to him or comfort him, you could just keep buying him drinks until he passed out cold, facedown on the table.

It was Friday, and Kyungsoo had walked into the bar five minutes late, and he looked like he’d eaten sixteen lemons, had his soul shat on by birds, and had (possibly) had a very bad day at work. Chanyeol saw Junmyeon and Sehun glance up for barely half a second of wordless conversation before Sehun turned around to order a gin and tonic at the exact same time Kyungsoo hauled himself up onto the first empty stool, crossed his arms on the bar, and gently tipped his head forward until his forehead was resting to his forearms.

“Here are the rules,” Jongin had said, way back when Chanyeol had first joined this particular group. “It doesn’t happen a lot, but sometimes Kyungsoo has to get really really _really_ drunk.”

“That won’t take long,” he’d said. “You could probably get him to 5% blood alcohol with a couple shots of soju.”

It didn’t happen very often, but sometimes Kyungsoo would show up five minutes late on a Friday night, get really really really drunk, and refuse to talk about it. (Whatever “it” was, he didn’t want to talk about it. Or at all, for preference. About anything. With anyone.)

He wasn’t a very loud person in general, but when he was drinking to get drunk he stayed silent for the entire night. Conversation wasn’t verboten, it just didn’t involve him - words rolled over him like waves over stone. 

Well, it _normally_ didn’t involve him. Words _normally_ rolled over him like waves over stone. Tonight, though, he set his glass down on the bar, (now emptied entirely of both gin and tonic), and cleared his throat. “Sometimes,” Kyungsoo announced to no one in particular, “it doesn’t seem like all this is worth it.”

Junmyeon turned to say something to Sehun but Sehun was already too busy talking to the bartender. Chanyeol wasn’t close enough to hear what he was saying, but whatever he said apparently amounted to _give Kyungsoo as many shots as it takes_ because that’s what ended up happening.

It didn’t happen very often. Kyungsoo was normally fine. Quiet, but fine. He’d smile and laugh at jokes and make his own jokes and he was fine, but then sometimes things got to be too much and he shattered. Just a little. Not a lot. Just a moment of brittle weakness that he usually patched up with silence and alcohol.

There were rules. Junmyeon was in charge of paying attention to how drunk he got. Sehun was in charge of ordering Kyungsoo’s drinks. Yixing sat on the stool to Kyungsoo’s right and Chanyeol sat on the stool to Kyungsoo’s left, so that when Kyungsoo inevitably tipped over they had a pretty good chance at catching him fast enough to prevent a concussion.

“Chanyeol,” Kyungsoo said. He was on his fourth drink (Sehun had switched from good liquor over to well drinks to save a little money - Kyungsoo was drunk enough now not to notice) and his tongue was thick in his mouth and his eyelids couldn’t agree on how open they should be and he was propping up most of his weight on his left elbow. “Chanyeol.”

“Kyungsoo,” Chanyeol said. His pint glass slipped a little in his hand, loose grip sliding on the condensation. “What’s up?”

“Practically nothing,” Kyungsoo said firmly, enunciating each syllable clearly like a news announcer. He slid over a little, his left wrist bumping gently up against Chanyeol’s right wrist. (Yixing shot Chanyeol a look over Kyungsoo’s head - _you better catch him if he falls_.) “My bones are really heavy.”

Oh shit. It was a bad one. Chanyeol laid his right hand on Kyungsoo’s shoulder as companionably as he could. “No worries, man. Tomorrow’s gonna be okay.”

Kyungsoo took a deep breath and reached up - moving Chanyeol’s hand from his left shoulder to his right. “Don’t take this the wrong way,” he mumbled under his breath, leaning in against Chanyeol’s chest. Resting his forehead on Chanyeol’s shoulder. “I’m just tired.”

“And a little drunk,” Chanyeol said, mouth suddenly and unexpectedly dry. “Like really drunk, actually. Maybe you should slow down on the—”

“Maybe you should shut up.”

“… Yeah. Right. Or that.”

Kyungsoo’s fourth drink sat on the bar, condensation rolling down the sides and pooling on the wood. It was almost empty by the time he turned away from it, and Chanyeol watched it distractedly as the ice melted, as his glass of beer warmed slowly in his hand, as Kyungsoo breathed raggedly against his chest.

The melting ice clinked, settled. Kyungsoo just breathed. Brought one hand up to his face. He mostly just seemed tired, like he’d said. Pretty drunk. Halfway asleep and fighting it all the way down.

After a few minutes Chanyeol glanced up, unable to ignore Yixing’s persistent glaring. _What?_ he mouthed.

 _What’s his deal?_ Yixing mouthed back.

Chanyeol made a face that (he hoped) communicated a complete lack of answers. How the hell would he know what Kyungsoo’s deal happened to be? Kyungsoo tended to hold his cards close to the chest, in his experience. But he’d been talking a little. He’d been responsive. Hell, he’d even spoken first.

“You okay?” he said. (Somewhere in his head there was a voice trying to get him to lean down and press his lips to the top of Kyungsoo’s head.)

“… Not really.” Kyungsoo slumped over a little more, if such a thing were even possible. “I think I just wanna to go home.”

“I can take you home.”

“I don’t want to be by myself.”

“I can sleep over at your apartment.”

“It’s okay.”

“No,” Chanyeol said. “It’s not okay. I’m taking you home.”

 

“You don’t need to stay,” Kyungsoo said again for what felt like the thousandth time. He’d started sobering up in the back of the cab and had gone from drowsy to quietly embarrassed in gradual increments. “I was really drunk. It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay,” Chanyeol said, repeating what he’d said in the bar. (He’d said it almost as many times as Kyungsoo had said _you don’t need to stay_ , and he knew with complete certainty that he’d always say it because it would always be true. It was never gonna be okay for Kyungsoo to get drunk and lonely and desperate. It was never gonna be okay.) He hit the elevator button. “You wanna get rid of me that fast? Don’t even want to invite me up for some tea or whatever?”

It took obvious effort for Kyungsoo to keep his blank face - he bit his lips together to hold back a smile, glanced away and kept his eyes low. “You can come up and have some tea or whatever. If you want.”

The elevator sang a quick triplet as the doors hissed open, and things got awkward all over again. Tiny space and silence and Kyungsoo staring at the floor. (It wasn’t okay, Chanyeol reminded himself. It wasn’t okay for Kyungsoo to feel like shit. Still, though - in terrible moments of quiet like this he almost wished he’d stayed at the bar.)

“I don’t have a lot of tea right now,” Kyungsoo said - and it was the fifth time that he’d broken the silence on his own. (Who was this, and what had they done with Kyungsoo?) “Black tea, barley tea. I think I have some matcha if I didn’t finish it already.”

“You don’t know if you’ve finished your own matcha?”

“It’s been a really fucked up week.”

Chanyeol held his breath for a second. They’d been friends for years now but he always felt a little like he was one step away from saying the wrong thing around Kyungsoo. He never did end up saying the wrong thing, but he couldn’t shake the feeling - he was just nervous, oddly enough. Almost the same kind of nervous as he’d been around his first middle school crush; that same constant worry that any second he was gonna fuck up somehow.

“You wanna talk about it?”

“Not really,” Kyungsoo said. Hesitated. “My mom is trying to get me to go on all these blind dates. I don’t know.”

The elevator doors whispered open onto Kyungsoo’s floor, the hallway lit up bright with the harsh glow of an artificial midday. Kyungsoo’s teeth clicked together as he closed his mouth, stepping out of the elevator and striding forward with his hands in his pockets.

Kyungsoo’s apartment was dark. Quiet. The curtains were drawn back. The city lights flickered like miniature manmade constellations below. When they paused in the entryway to kick off their shoes Chanyeol couldn’t help but notice how untidy everything was.

The scuff of house slippers over the blonde wood floor, echoing a little as Kyungsoo wandered into the kitchen. “I still have matcha,” he said after a minute of rustling, voice floating into the small living room distantly. “If you want. I got ginseng, too. With jujube. Do you want—”

“Barley tea is fine.” 

Chanyeol stood by the wide bank of windows running along the living room wall, leaning back on his hips with his hands in his pockets. He didn’t really want tea. He wanted beer, or soju, or maybe even both - one after the other. He wanted ddeokbokki from a roadside stand. He wanted to go out and run around and enjoy Friday night and go to a noraebang and mostly what he wanted was for Kyungsoo to stop feeling like shit so that they could go do all of that together.

It took a few minutes for Kyungsoo to finish up in the kitchen and come stand next to Chanyeol by the windows, holding a mug of tea out to him wordlessly. “I’m still kind of drunk,” he said. “Sorry if it tastes weird.”

“I’m sure it’s fine.” Chanyeol took a sip. “What was that about your mom? And the blind dates?” His gut twisted for some reason and he tried like hell to ignore it. “Doesn’t seem that bad.”

“I already like someone,” Kyungsoo blurted out - then coughed. “I mean, like—”

“Can’t you just tell your mom?” Chanyeol glared down into the shallow depths of his tea and tried not to think about Kyungsoo’s forehead on his shoulder back in the bar, the way he’d said _I don’t want to be alone_ , all the times he’d walked into the bar five minutes late looking like he’d eaten sixteen lemons and had his soul shat on by an entire flock of birds and Chanyeol hadn’t known what the hell to say.

“... Not really. It’s not that easy.”

“Y’gonna tell me, at least? Is she a coworker or something? Your boss?” Chanyeol coughed out a disbelieving laugh. “Fuck, Kyungsoo - don’t tell me you fell for a high school girl—”

“I didn’t fall for a girl,” Kyungsoo interrupted, words clipped - but then seemed to choke a little in the back of his throat. “I mean - a high school girl. The person I like is older than me. Not a high school girl.”

“Five thousand won says it’s your boss.”

“Gimme five thousand won then, because it’s not my boss.”

“Are you gonna tell me who it is or not?”

Kyungsoo took a long sip of his tea. (He was drinking the ginseng tea he’d mentioned, the one with jujube; Chanyeol could smell it. Slight sweetness mixing with the knife-sharp scent of good ginseng. It reminded him of something but he couldn’t quite remember what.) “Probably not,” he said finally, the words thick in his mouth. “I just have to get over it. Go on a couple blind dates. It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay,” Chanyeol said, turning to lean against the window frame and give Kyungsoo a Look. “How many times am I gonna have to say that? You don’t just get drunk out of your damn mind for no reason. That’s not the kind of thing an okay person does. You don’t have to keep acting like shit’s okay. You’re just going to get over it? You’re not even gonna try?”

“Nope,” Kyungsoo said, still staring resolutely out the window. “The person I like doesn’t like me back anyway. It doesn’t matter how much I put it off. It’s never going to work out.”

“Have you even told her you like her?”

“No. And I’m not going to.”

Chanyeol choked on his tea. “Kyung— are you shitting me? How do you know she doesn’t like you back if you’ve never even confessed?”

“Everybody’s got a type,” Kyungsoo said. His eyes had gone halfway closed. “And I’m not the right type. It’s not really that complicated.”

“Everybody’s got exceptions.”

“Not this time.”

“Why not this time? What’s the right type?”

“Female,” Kyungsoo said.

“... Oh,” Chanyeol said.

“Yeah.”

“I gotta admit, falling for a lesbian is a new one.” Chanyeol pushed off of the window frame. “If it’s any consolation, I’d totally date you.”

Kyungsoo shot him a glare with red-rimmed eyes. “Fuck off.”

“Nah, straight up.” Why was he doing this? Shut up, Park Chanyeol. Just don’t. “You’re smart.” _You’re smarter than me_. “You laugh at my jokes.” _You’re funny._ “You’re cute.” _Your mouth is perfect_. “You - you like music. We have a lot of stuff in common to talk about. Not the worst idea I’ve ever had.”

“‘Sorry, mom,’” Kyungsoo said, putting on a stupid voice. “‘I’d love to meet your friend’s sister’s daughter-in-law’s cousin, but unfortunately I’ve entered into a deviant homosexual fling with my friend Park Chanyeol.’ That’ll go over great.”

“... Is that what you think?”

Kyungsoo hesitated. “What, that it’ll go over great? Chanyeol, I was being sarcastic, it’s not like—”

“No, about - I mean the deviant homosexual thing. Do you think it’s deviant?”

“My mom does,” Kyungsoo said, turning away to walk back toward the kitchen. “It doesn’t matter anyway. It’s okay.”

“It’s not okay,” Chanyeol stuttered out, (again again again - was it ever going to be okay?), reaching forward to catch Kyungsoo’s elbow. “Kyungsoo, listen, are you just pissed that your crush is a lesbian and you won’t be able to—”

“The person I like is a man,” Kyungsoo said quietly. He pulled his arm out of Chanyeol’s grip. “And you’re right, it’s not okay. But it has to be. So it is.”

“Is it me?”

Kyungsoo tripped a little over his own feet. “That’s what you wanna know? You’re not questioning the whole homosexual crush thing?”

“I’m the one who said I’d date you,” Chanyeol said, following Kyungsoo into the kitchen. “You think I’m gonna be pissed that you’re kinda gay? Soo, give me a little credit here—”

“Yeah,” Kyungsoo said. He poured the dregs of his tea down the sink drain, not looking up. “Yeah, it is.”

“What is?”

“The answer to your question,” Kyungsoo said, brushing past Chanyeol. “The answer is you.”

Chanyeol’s body moved faster than his brain could keep up so they were both taken by surprise when Kyungsoo’s wrist ended up in Chanyeol’s hand, pulling back to turn him around. There was something stuck in his throat but he said it anyway, because he couldn’t not say it: “Are you joking?”

“I’m well known for my witty repartee,” Kyungsoo said, twisting his arm in Chanyeol’s grip. He wasn’t struggling, really - it was barely a token resistance. “Let go of—”

 _You’re smarter than me_. _You’re funny._ _Your mouth is perfect_. 

Chanyeol pulled him in, (god - had Kyungsoo always been that much shorter than him?), bent down, took a leap of faith. Shut him up. Caught his mouth.

Kyungsoo’s breath hitched in his chest but he didn’t resist. He just went a little slack, face tipped up, eyes closed. They’d been friends for years and Chanyeol had spent the whole time nervous, in almost the same way he’d been nervous around his middle school crush. They’d been friends for years and Chanyeol was hit suddenly by the realization that he’d been wanting to kiss Kyungsoo for the entire goddamn time.

It took a second but Kyungsoo eventually opened his mouth, lips parting to let Chanyeol in, sighing thickly in the back of his throat. He was tipped back and unsteady and his eyes were closed and he didn’t quite seem entirely present, so Chanyeol slid one hand over the back of his neck to help keep him upright and just kissed him harder.

“Chanyeol,” Kyungsoo stuttered out, pulling away with eyes unfocused. lips swollen and spit-slick. “Are you just fucking around?”

“I like you,” Chanyeol said, voice tight. “I like you a lot.”

“So wait—”

“So you wanna lie around and make out?”

Kyungsoo made a face. “... Yeah,” he said. “You’re gross. But yeah.”


End file.
